From our CEO: What’s on the horizon for 2017 at Culture Amp

2016 has been a huge year for Culture Amp. We’re now in four offices: San Francisco, Melbourne, New York and London. We’re almost 100 people. We’ve reached an exciting tipping point in terms of the data that we have, the companies we work with, and our 30,000-strong People Geek community.

2017 is shaping up to be even more exciting on every front. Here’s what’s in store for us.

New product launches

I can’t actually tell you about the specific products we have coming out yet, but I can provide an idea of where Culture Amp is heading in this space.

We will continue to observe, examine, question and act. Our system is evolving to learn from itself so that when you become a customer at Culture Amp, you’re not just learning from your own people but you’re getting the benefits from the huge set of aggregate data that we’ve collected over the past 7 years.

We’re putting more work into the intersection of quantitative and qualitative data. We want to know not just what is going on in the organization, but why. Why do people behave as they do, and how does that affect your business? Why are some sections of your organization engaged, whilst others are not?

We will pass 100,000 People Geeks and build the Culture Amp ecosystem

I’m super excited to watch the continued growth of the global People Geek community. We’re past 30,000 members and I expect it to top six figures next year. It’s at the point where we’re starting to build some really strong relationships with people all over the world that are as manic about people and culture as we are.

We’re also building the foundations of an end-to-end Culture Amp ‘ecosystem’. At the end of the day we’re a product company, not a services business. But we know there are incredible people and organisations throughout the world who can help with almost any people and culture challenge. Over the next year, you’re going to see us launch some very exciting partnerships right across the people and culture ecosystem.

Expanding our footprint

San Francisco was the first city in which we opened our own dedicated office. We have about 25 people there. New York and London, our newest offices, employ six or seven people each. We work in co-working spaces in both those cities, which is how we started in Melbourne.

Speaking of Melbourne, we’ve finally outgrown the amazing co-working space that is Inspire9. We stayed because we loved the environment, but we were taking over half the space, which is not really what co-working is all about. We’re in the final stages of council approval for our own custom-built space and have taken the backend of a lease in the city in the meantime, freeing up Inspire9 to house and inspire a new generation of startups.

Culture Amp 2017 and beyond

A year ago we were 50 people in three offices. Today we’re 98 people across four offices. Next year, all going to plan, we’ll probably double in size again.

Over the next year, we’ll achieve a global People Geek community of over 100,000 people. We’ll build a product and engineering team here in Australia that’s as good as not only anything in Australia, but anything in the world. And perhaps most importantly, we’ll take “Culture First” away from just the early adopters and into the mainstream.

Thankfully, we’ve already done the impossible stuff. The next bit is merely hard.

Didier Elzinga is a People Geek and CEO/Co-Founder of Culture Amp. You can follow Didier on Medium, Twitter or LinkedIn.